Psychohistorical Crisis

22

SEDUCED BY HISTORY, 14,791 GE

On the death of that emperor [Caesar-of-August], his testament was publicly read to the senate. He bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits, which Nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries; on the west the Atlantic ocean; the Rhine and Danube on the north; the Euphrates on the east; and toward the south, the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa.

Happily... the moderate system he recommended... was adopted by the fears and vices of his immediate successors. Engaged in the pursuit of pleasure, or in the exercise of tyranny, the first Caesars seldom showed themselves to the armies, or to the provinces; nor were they disposed to suffer, that those triumphs which their indolence neglected should be usurped by the conduct and valor of their lieutenants. The military fame of a subject was considered as an insolent invasion of the Imperial prerogative; and it became the duty, as well as interest, of every Roman general, to guard the frontier entrusted to his care, without aspiring to conquests which might have proved no less fatal to himself than to the vanquished barbarians.... Germanicus, Suetonius Paulinus, and Agricola, were checked and recalled in the course of their victories. Corbulo was put to death.

—Edward Gibbon in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volumes I-V, original editions (English)

1776-1788 AD, translation by Colmuni of Archaist Press 75,398 AD

Nothing had come of his fam upgrade and that had chastened Eron, giving him much to mull over on the trip out from Neuhadra. The first leg of their journey would take them to ancient Sewinna, one of the first worlds colonized in this arm of space. He kept to himself on the ship, suddenly conscious that soon he would no longer be under anyone’s tutorship. He practiced making decisions on his own—while he still had the indomitable Murek to run to. The fam mattered less and less; it was as if he had stopped grasping at flotsam to keep him afloat in the ocean and was now determined to learn how to swim. He kept away from Nemia, except to quiz her about her strange Egg which so fascinated him that he couldn’t keep his hands off it. He was resenting his tutor less and less.

He found himself ignoring the stars, indifferent to the shipboard telescope which had so recently fascinated him. One peek at a star and you’ve seen them all! Glatim’s odd group of roustabout sailors and meteoroid specialists teased him too much—once during a jump-stop they sent him after a left-handed nanowrench when he was trying to be helpful; so much for trying to be friends with motherless piss drinkers! And their snarks! The next time they set him up for laying traps to catch cable-eating shipsnarks he was going to put salt in their sugar!

He began to seclude himself at a spare console (found while looking for the left-handed nanowrench). It was scrunched up in a split-level storage closet off the library’s memory racks. Even in that confined lair, with only a screen connection to the library, ignoring the stars wasn’t easy. Ship’s memory was overstocked with the minutiae of millions of solar systems, almost as if the ship were a police catalog of all the rocks in the universe ever booked as troublemakers. Special attention was given to gargantuan planets that gathered gangs of whatever rabble passed by, scattering them helter-skelter.

Still, it was possible to skip over all the celestial mechanics because the archives had also accumulated huge gobs of history about the regions of space they were passing through. History just seemed to come along with the bookish weight of solar system mechanics like a laundrator accumulating lint—mapping expeditions, the details of political crises caused by astronomical events, the fracas around the Epsilon Oramaist nova, the weird jungles on the moon of an almost star-size planet, endless background detail. Sometimes the interesting lint was just a story that one of Glatim’s men had downloaded into the ship’s archive years ago for personal reasons and no one had bothered to erase.

Because their first destination was Sewinna, he did a search on the Sewinnese Archipelago to see what he could find. The most interesting item he turned up was a fictional account of the Sewinnese revolt. That was early Interregnum stuff when an especially greedy viceroy had done the unthinkable and broken his domain off from the First Empire.

The story, composed only years after the now-buried historical event it described, was told from the viewpoint of a young soldier of noble blood still committed to the old values—and as blind as the author to the grand significance of the unfolding events. Eron found the tale fascinating because it wasn’t a story built upon modem tropes and psy-chohistorical hindsight. Everything about it was strange, even the interwoven music was strange—blood-dancing stuff, primitively regal—yet accompanied by words so naive that Eron couldn’t believe he was hearing diem. He famfed the whole novel out of the library so that he could mull it over during “bunk-watch” and use his fam’s imaginator to blank out the underside of the upper bunk with the exotic images of battles and conflicts suggested by the adventure. He especially liked the lurid sex and the passionate men who were unafraid to use their blasters!

Viceroy Wisard (a historical figure) had ambitions on the throne. The author (probably correctly) supposed that Wisard took the newly crowned Boy Emperor to be too weak to reply to separatist audacity so far from the Center. Hadn’t the minor Precinct of Nacreome already been lost a century earlier to his great-uncle? A spineless dynasty. The Galactic Empire obviously needed new Imperial blood of a more ruthless kind. Wisard’s kind. Driving the Sewinnese into the hardship of war preparations, Wisard provoked only a revolt of his own people. (In the story the revolt is led by the fictional hero who rallies the Sewinnese to rejoin the Empire by carrying out their honorable duty, the obvious preference of the author.)

Meanwhile (as the hero drives Wisard and the remnants of his personal guard off planet) the Boy Emperor is marshaling his answer to insurrection through the Imperial Navy’s most pitiless Admiral. His armada arrives with soldiers intent upon loot and a leader intent upon seizing the viceroyalty himself. (These were dramatic scenes of struggle on a large stage capable of a graphic elaboration much more interesting than a view of the bunk above!)

The naive counter-revolution, though pro-Empire, was viciously suppressed, its goals not being in the self-interest of an Admiral who, like his vain predecessor, had unnatural ambitions. Again the Sewinnese populace suffered horribly. (The hero fights a valiant retrenchment in the thick of this setback and, finally, at the height of the bloodshed, bungles his desperate attempt to assassinate the new viceroy. The hero’s honor, honed by failure, demands revenge, if not upon the Admiral, at least upon the youthful tyrant who sent forth this bloody fleet of retribution. In a breathless climactic action sequence the avenger smuggles himself into Splendid Wisdom, there to succeed in assassinating the Boy Emperor. The author’s final tragic scene, pure fictional melodrama, sets both hero-assassin and dying Boy Emperor in an embrace where they tearfully confess their sins to each other before the Imperial Guards belatedly reduce the hero to cinders.)

Eron was lured into the role of director, his fam on overdrive creating sets, costumes, special minor characters, fantastically immense Imperial machinery, and even changing some of the clunky dialog, especially the words to the music. That was a sleepless night! He missed breakfast with his sailor-tormentors.

In the next few watches, as Eron delved into other sources to research the real-life Boy Emperor Tien-the-Young, 12,216-12,222 GE, he found that all of the information about Tien’s real assassin had been lost in the violent Sack of Splendid Wisdom 116 years later. The historical record did mention that his agent, the Admiral who so cruelly punished the Sewinnese people for Wisard’s sins, died at the hands of the only surviving son of a family he had imprisoned and tortured.

The story intrigued Eron’s budding curiosity about history because it had been written only a century before the Sack and the author, though clearly troubled by the politics of his time, was among the vast majority of that age who could not conceive of an Empire at the end of its tether— troubles came and went but the Empire was forever—which was amazing because the whole novel was about the rot that would destroy the Empire within the century! The Founder had already told the Galaxy what would be happening and was himself centuries dead—but the Imperial Court and humanity just weren’t listening! Even authors who wrote about the find decay—who lived it!—couldn’t see the extent of the coming disaster!

He began to wonder if there wasn’t something as preposterously obvious about his own age standing so hugely in front of his face that he couldn’t see it. Was the real world invisible to the dulled perceptions of a boy trained to view the Galaxy from the cliched axioms of a Ganderian? Was he living in a renaissance? Or was he standing at the top of a landslide that was set to sweep them down into a Vortex of Death? Was he looking out over a plateau of stability that would last a million years? Or was there a snark out there, hidden even from psychohistorians become complacent? He didn’t know. He felt blind. He felt ignorant. He felt, above all, curious.

When the hypership reached Sewinna and popped into orbit while Glatim’s men rounded up supplies needed at Tre-fia, Eron ran away. It was just another revolt to establish his independence, another notch in his history of rebellion— though this time it was driven by his passionate need to wander through the stones stronghold from which the whole

Sewinnese Archipelago had once been ruled. The story’s intrigues began inside that redoubt; the author had actually been one of the irregulars who had attacked it, and Eron had to touch the ancient stones with his own feet and the pillars with his own hands. It was a real place. (How would it compare with his vividly imagined version?) He fully intended to be back at the ship in the nick of time, the thrill of his own revolt being tempered by a growing common sense. But let his pompous tutor sweat a little.

Once there in the valley, and seeing the fortress high on that gentle mountain slope, its awesome historicity sobered him. Lovingly rebuilt out of its ruins to serve as Sewinna’s historical library, it commanded a green landscape of forest and industrial farm. His personal revolt against his tutor began to shrink in stature as he climbed the hundred stone stairs of the grand processional way—broad enough to have allowed ten score Imperial troopers to climb abreast! He pretended to be a trooper but gave it up because his fam couldn’t virtually duplicate himself two hundred times as a line formation of goose-stepping battle-scarred soldiers marching up the stone stairs, eyes front.

Reverent footfalls took him through the portal and into the cathedral light of the haughty basilica, where his petty defiance shriveled further, finally dying of humiliation when he reached the offices of the Imperial proxy. He stood silently in awe: here had begun, in this room of polished stone, a revolt against a Stellar Empire then twelve thousand years mature, an Empire that had commanded more of the night sky than eyes could see!

The chamber of the viceroy had been refurnished to match the decor of the study it had once been, complete with antique ivroid book-modules and reader, master screens, a huge desk, throne, maps, pacing rugs. A realm of daring! A pathologically cautious Ganderian would have allowed himself only to dream the defiance of such a man—for action has its own double-edged karma, glory or tragedy at the throw of the dice. Eron saw it all and it was all tragedy... the disgraced viceroy Wisard driven into exile among the Archipelago’s minor red stars with the piratical remnant of his Imperial units, his ambition in tatters... his arrogant replacement taking measures against the people of Sewinna in salutary a sepsis, ordering, from his safe viceroy’s throne, the death of millions to teach his vain lesson—a lesson repaid, in time, with assassination, right here, as he ran abjectly to drop behind a desk he never reached.

While Eron stood frozen by his thoughts, ancient time rolled by, the tragic drama unfolding its variations on a theme. The rule of immature Tien-the-Young, murdered before his prime, gave way to the strongest Emperor seen in a century of decline. Sewinna’s next viceroy, under the auspices of this more imposing emperor, marshaled the last great fleet before the Fall, again headquartered in this very room. The viceroy, a brilliant commanding general too dangerous to leave at court, led the resurgent Empire’s successful attack against the growing might of Faraway, defeating them decisively—but his formidable Emperor’s strength, in the end, manifested itself as a “first-strike” ability to execute the more successful generals of his reign. Soldiers, battleships, fleets—all devoured by the onrushing Interregnum!

Power to the Founder! Two and a half millennia later only this stone fortress remained of that turbulent era, its ghosts and their moans of woe talking to a child of psychohistory among the shadows of a forgotten past dimly resurrected by the effete enthusiasm of scholars.

A sobered Eron Osa called in to tell the Glatim boys where he was and when he would be back, earlier than he had intended. He mentioned in passing, deadpan, that he was researching the central Sewinnese library for the latest on left-handed nanowrenches. They laughed. A relieved tutor took the comm and reminded Eron sternly that they would have to leave without him if he didn’t turn up on time. Eron promised, and even promised to call again to reconfirm his return.

He got back early, but a full watch later than he’d planned—and he did call in to confirm the delay. On his way to the spaceport a monster bookstore found him and trapped him in its history section. Two books on pre-imperial economics cost him almost all of the rest of die money he had on him, but the third, a treasure, he found thrown on a table rack with the unwanteds from an estate clearance, mostly cheap media for prefam kids.

The Decline and Fall... was printed on delicate cellomet with elaborate typography for the headings. It had a sturdy binding with an electronic back cover addendum that contained all the previous copies from which it had been translated and many of the documents that had been original sources, all in the original alphabets with correlation dictionaries. And alphabets he’d never seen before! He couldn’t tell how old the history was, but it was about really old stuff!

When his tutor saw the three new books in a sack he grumbled, but Eron offered no apology for that. He did try to apologize for running away without a word. His pseudoparent only shut him up. “We’re almost there. At Faraway you’ll be your own master. You might as well start now. Asinia Pedagogic doesn’t run its school in loco parentis; you study or you don’t—it doesn’t matter if you are twelve or fifty. You can be sure of only two things: one, they’ll deduct their due from your credit stick every semester and, two, if you aren’t certifiable due to lack of study, they won’t certify you. Run away and they won’t chase you. There is nothing to run away from anymore.” He picked out the fat book and thumbed through it like he wasn’t used to handling pages of cellomet. “Looks like you got stung on this one! Look when it was purported to have been written.” He pointed at the dates 1776-1788 AD, and laughed.

“That’s pretty early in Imperial history,” Eron said apprehensively.

“No, no. It’s a Rithian book. They never adopted Imperial Time. Being Rithians they date events from the birthday of a Rithian who, after being murdered, ascended into chaos with a bang and created the galaxies for man to inhabit. And seeing that it was good, named it heaven. Whatever con shop on Rith published your book to catch some naive tourist is claiming that it was written”—he paused—“some 743 Imperial centuries ago.” Eron’s tutor guffawed. “I doubt if any Rithian could read back then or even walk upright. To this day they still have the bewildered gait of tree-swingers who have chopped down all their trees and are looking for something to climb. Some historians think the entire body of their ancient literature is a forgery, and wasn’t created until after they mongrelized with their Eta Cumingan conquerors and figured out how to count money on their fingers.” He shook his finger at the book by Gibbon. “It damn well better be a copy—I don’t think cellomet will last that long if it’s not kept under helium.”

“Aren’t we descended from Rith?”

“So they claim—along with every other planet in the Sirius Sector.”

“You don’t think it’s true?”

His tutor shrugged. “It could be. They certainly have the simian genes and the backbone of an animal who walks on all fours to prove it. Why shouldn’t we be descended from a planetful of blowhards? A good joke, if true. It’s hard to tell because Rith produces half of the Galaxy’s con artists. Their favorite scam is to sell you an artifact that they will swear predates hyperspatial travel and, if you look especially gullible, will swear on the head of their mother that it predates space travel. They have factories producing the stuff. Some poor guy chained to a table probably wrote your charming book no more than five hundred years ago.”

“It’s real. Just read a page and you’ll see!” Eron thrust the book at his tutor and opened to a page at random.

Scogil had never downloaded Englic but he could read the first page of the introduction in the archaic but eminently standard galactic of a pedantic editor. “It must have been forged no earlier than the last couple of thousand years— sounds like a rip-off of the plot of the Interregnum. Kid, the Rithians are the Galaxy’s most adept forgers, right down to the radioactive traces... anyway... who’s going to read your book to check on them? You can’t famfeed it.” He flipped to the end. “It’s three thousand pages long!”

“I can read it in an afternoon!”

“By eye? Good luck. And in case you ever let Nemia do an astrological reading of your unpromising future, you were bom, Rith time”—he paused to do a calculation in his head, converting at the ratio of 1057 Rithian years for every galactic standard millennium—“on the second hour, third of februan, 80,362 AD. Don’t ask me under what constellation—that’s Nemia’s department.”

Eron took his book back, firmly, and started to slink away. “Not so fast, young man. I owe you a spanking. Did you think we would have gallivanted all over Sewinna tracking you down?”

“No.”

“We would have left you stranded. Of necessity.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here,” said Eron contritely. “I did some thinking.”

“Good.”